The Back of Someone Smaller
by Winged-Violoncelle
Summary: Winry has always loathed waiting. EdWin oneshot.


_Spoiler's alert: mild spoilers of Chapter 47+_

_Just a drabble-ish product for EdWin fans, written while listening to Kyoudai, and thoroughly revised._

_Enjoy and pwease review._

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The Back of Someone Smaller

She has always loathed waiting.

Perhaps it was due to her ill luck, because it always took so long for whatever she waited for to return even once. There was one time where they didn't come back at all. She hated that above all else. It made her feel particularly useless, a feeling that often forced a lump into her throat, a feeling that often made her dig her nails so deep into her sheets, a feeling that often spilled the side of her pillow with salty tears. It was an empty feeling that robbed her of her flesh, filling it up instead with despair, with a sour realization that she would never see what she had waited for ever again. And then there was hatred. She couldn't remember how many times she snuggled in her sheets, crying, cursing the unknown man who had taken them away, wondering why he did so. It wasn't fair. Her parents were the sweetest people in the world. They shouldn't have been the ones to go. They should've stayed with her, and grandma Pinako, like a proper family. They should've come back and saved more lives. They…

Once she considered vengeance. She knelt, tears in her eyes, pointing a gun at the man who had taken them away. For a split second, a gun did not seem like the killing machine she remembered. But her hands trembled. She hated herself for her inability to stop the tears from trickling down her eyes, for her inability to pull the trigger at the man who had taken them away. She hated herself for many things, and, at that time especially, she hated herself for having to watch his back.

He had jumped in without a second of hesitation, because she had not been able to react to the assaulting hand, meaning to silence her forever. It didn't seem to occur to him that _he_ could have been silenced forever in her place. He just seemed so firm then.

Somehow, that was all over. She didn't remember nor wanted to remember much else about what happened to the man who had taken her parents away. What she did remember was that idiot, covered in blood, recklessly jumping in, telling her to drop the gun, and that her hand was not that of a killer's: it was made to bring happiness and life.

She wept.

From that point on, she seemed to see his back more often than ever. She realized that she'd always seen it, and hated herself for being ignorant of it. She hated him too, for always showing no more than a back. He's been through so much more than she has. He shouldn't be the one to worry about her.

She didn't need to watch the back of someone smaller than herself.

She had tried so hard to catch up since then. She knew she could never do so much as to stand in front of him, but the least she could do was to run by his side. The least she could do was to make him the best automail in Rush Valley. She even went so far as to put her own life in the hands of that man who had taken them away – because she didn't need, or want, to watch the back of someone smaller than herself.

He won out in the end. Some "promised day" business that she didn't want to know about prompted him to walk away yet again, showing her his back one more time. She couldn't help noticing that he's grown taller. She wasn't watching the back of someone smaller anymore. That same back has gotten infinitely larger, and there was no way a smaller creature like her could make her way up beside him.

So she was left behind, waiting, like she had done years ago for her parents, the sweetest persons in the world. She'd realized that she had forgotten the empty, sour feeling of fruitless waiting for a while. She didn't like lying to herself either, and so she told herself that she hoped she wouldn't feel that feeling ever again.

She _hoped_.

She sighed as she pushed herself up from the chair. Reluctantly, she lifted her gaze away from the blue sky and wandering clouds. It wasn't the time to muse. She didn't want to be useless. She would make this hateful waiting worth it. She would show him that waiting can, too, be a way to fight. She would make faces at the back that was once small, because she didn't want to admit that she had totally underestimated the true size of his back.

She wouldn't be empty, as long as she knew that he was still out there, running: because a runner on the path of life is bound to, one day, look back. That day, he'd see her, and her waiting would hopefully be over.

She slid a finger over her beloved wrench, and smiled at the familiar scent of machine oil, the scent that she absolutely adored.

She would keep smiling and become the best mechanic in Rush Valley.

Because Edward Elric promised her that the next time he makes her cry, it'd be tears of happiness.

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